


Xtal

by 1q84



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:41:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2252868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1q84/pseuds/1q84
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The seven stages of their relationship, from just before the end to the beginning, completely out of order because I'm pretentious garbage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Xtal

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've posted anywhere in years, and I had an excellent beta treatment from ecdysiast and thought "might as well". Profuse apologies for everything after this.

Untitled 6

Percy winds up sitting in the sand watching Jason take off his shirt and wondering how he’s going to break up with him after today, because a son of Zeus removing his shirt is a sight you want burned so far into you it imprints on your optic nerve. The sun goes down earlier in August than it does in June, like the sunset at 9:37pm that lit up their first kiss two years ago. Now it’s barely 7 and there’s only gold coming off a horizon cloaked in deep pinks and slumbering shades of orange. Jason’s hair looks positively radiant, each strand a prism. There’s something that pulls Percy to fix his gaze, a pull as deep as the one from the sea. Eros was right, a part of his brain says. Yeah, and Zeus’ anger trumps love with a fucking thunderbolt, responds another. He finally looks away at the horizon and then to the sky as he wills the sand to swallow him.

Untitled 2

It’s not the best part, but it is Jason’s favorite, because when he’s done training he can come back to his cabin, kick off his shoes, and collapse on his bed next to someone. It’s Jason’s favorite part because it’s an ordinary ritual with a subtle but important twist, and a small light spreads like ripples in a pond through his bones. Percy is on his bed now, like he is every night, waiting for him, waiting to softly say “hey” before diving back into one of the laptops Annabeth swiped from the Labyrinth mall’s Apple store. He’s busy now, every night really, fielding emails and coordinating quests between the two camps. He’ll always say “hey” in that voice that makes Jason melt every time and look up to kiss him, though. Even though it happens every night it still feels like a small miracle, like an answer to a prayer he never made.

Untitled 4

A year ago, Percy told him (when Necrophis venom was running through his blood and Jason was nearly too late and it had been so close for them, they knew) that the kiss every night (when Jason takes off his sneakers and they are two people sharing one small space again) always tastes like the best possible future (no, like a crashing wave on the shore, he thinks one day and then every day after, because that’s what a future is, right?). Jason never let his boyfriend (they don’t know when they started calling each other that but they wish they’d started sooner) leave his sights until he had healed three weeks later. They had to drug him to get him to sleep. Percy eventually recovered and Jason eventually relaxed, but now that nightly ritual turned into a prayer for him and his boyfriend to do it again. He felt himself start to take slower, more measured steps when he got in at night. If Percy noticed, he didn’t say anything. But he started lingering more, Jason thinks to himself with a smile.

Untitled 3

For some reason, all Percy remembers about that October is listening to a bunch of Disclosure, because it’s Jason’s favorite band, and drinking pumpkin spice lattés in the park, because those are his favorite drink even if he won’t admit it to anyone. He holds Jason’s hand sometimes and admires the leaves and the impressively shifting sky and the way his boyfriend’s jawline looks like a mountain at sunset. They wind up kissing a lot on one particular bench and Jason jokes about carving their initials in it one afternoon. When there’s a chill they’re too in love to notice blowing through the air, Percy ducks out of class early one day to actually carve them into the bench and shows Jason and they nearly wind up fucking right there in broad daylight. Percy gets the best head of his life that night.

Untitled 5

Percy realizes it has to end when he gets a small cut sparring with a particularly fierce daughter of Hecate and Jason winds up storming out of the house. When he gets back they have a massive fight that wakes half the neighbors and nearly brings a thunderstorm down on them. Jason can’t stand to see Percy hurt and lets him know it. Percy hates being treated like a broken bird, like a child. He knows it’s love and caring and the kind of devotion you’re only capable of when you’re in love, but there’s also a sense of trust that breaks that night. Percy swims to Oakland and back three times instead of sleeping, and mulls over how he’s going to tell his boyfriend that they can’t be in love anymore, after 2 years of sharing an apartment and a bed and their bodies. 

He decides to wait until Sunday, when he gets back from Seattle, and spends the train ride up to Chiron’s booking a mover and finding an apartment on 4 day’s notice. 

He decides to make it clean and swift and fast, fast enough where he won’t be able to twist the knife into his spine more than what’s already going to happen.

Untitled 7

They get back from the beach and Jason takes off his shoes to get the sand out. Percy finally went into the ocean after savoring his last look of Jason Grace taking off his shirt, and the calming effect isn’t enough to make him stop the hot, wiry anxious energy overloading his nerves right now, but it’s enough to keep him from passing out.

Percy tells him, and Jason keeps his composure long enough for Percy to throw some clothes into a suitcase and toss his key onto the table and leave. He hears thunder booming overhead as soon as he walks out the door and a tree on the other side of the street gets struck by lightning hard enough that it winds up as charred splinters and a faint ozone smell lingering in the air. Percy decides flying is probably out of the question for the rest of his life now and winds up on the first train he can find to New York. 

His mom will comfort him and he’ll get a new apartment and maybe meet someone else, years from now. It will be fine, everyone says for the first two weeks, and while he nods in that tired, bittersweet way that suggests a kind of acceptance, he doesn’t really buy it.

Untitled 1

Their first kiss is at sunset, in the top branches of Thalia’s tree. Jason misses his sister, but he comes here to feel like she’s not so far away; he’s not grieving, in other words, not letting loss guide him, but hope. Percy feels like he’ll never feel that way again, but he will, and he finds out that night. The needles seem to bristle and then shake gently, as if laughing at her stupid kid brother before quietly approving. Thalia won’t take it as well at first, but she’ll get used to it. That night Percy fumbles through Jason’s zipper and under his shirt and Jason is focused but his hands still shake and they stay in bed for nearly 24 hours, unlearning and relearning everything and having sex like they have a day to live. Jason doesn’t care that they will probably always fight over who gets to top or that Percy is the most incompetent person with lube, like, ever. It only drives the point home that he's never been this happy and that's why he kisses like it's water and he's parched, why he tries to maintain touch with him at all possible times, why he falls asleep with a smile on his face.


End file.
